by Norm Crampton

About the author: Norm Crampton, author of The One Hundred Best Small Towns in America, is the executive director of the Indiana Institute of Recycling in Terre Haute.

In 1990, lots of Americans were worried about garbage. Taking it out was no longer a mildly pleasurable act of household cleansing. For many of us, toting the trash to the curb had become a big guilt trip.

Forecasts of disappearing dump space had us down in the dumps. A tidal wave of trash was about to bury us under our wasteful lifestyles, or so we thought at the time. The cover story on the Nov. 27, 1989, issue of Newsweek was typical: “BURIED ALIVE . . . An Environmental Crisis Reaches Our Doorstep.”

Here we are years later, and things look pretty tidy, garbage-wise. What happened...